The Place I Call Home, The Place I Am Kept From
By Willy Wai Yan Min Htike
Every time semester or session break approaches, conversations around me turn to plane tickets and homecomings. During this period, my friends will talk about reunions with childhood friends, favorite foods waiting on the table, and the comfort of sleeping in their old rooms again. When someone asks where I am going, I hesitate. I have no answer. The last time I went back to Myanmar was after my freshman year, for a single week. Since then, home has become a place I shall no longer reach, a word that carries more ache than warmth.
When people ask what I love about my country, I wish I could speak about its beauty, the golden temples of Mandalay, the smell of fresh mohinga in the morning, or the chatter of street vendors along the Ayeyarwady River. But, for me these memories feel distant now. What comes first to mind instead is the morning of February 2021, when soldiers filled the street outside my house. I was fifteen. The air smelled of gasoline and fear. My mother told me to stay away from the windows. I remember the sound of boots, the sight of rifles, and the silence that followed. A fiveteen-year old me thought that was just a firework, but little did I know the consequences and the series of event that carried along with it. That day, I realized how fragile normal life could be. Since then, the country I grew up in has become almost unrecognizable. Electricity comes and goes. The internet flickers and often blocked. The last time I called my mother, her voice was swallowed by static as another blackout hit Mandalay. The call ended mid-sentence, leaving only a frozen image of her smile on the screen.
Image by Wai Yan (Willy) Min Htike
Shortly after that morning, the military seized power in a coup, overturning the results of a democratic election and detaining civilian leaders. Protests spread across the country, met with violent crackdowns that led to thousands of deaths and arrests. Armed resistance grew in response, and large parts of the country have since been caught in ongoing conflict. Our daily life within the country has been disrupted by instability, with basic services like electricity, healthcare, and communication becoming unreliable.
At DKU, when the semester ends, I watch my peers roll their suitcases across the courtyard, their faces bright with anticipation. For me, every break is a question mark, leaving me on the flight booking website browsing over all the options that I have other than my home. My freshman summer, I worked as a Chinese language guide for the Language and Culture Center, helping incoming students adjust to campus life. In my sophomore and junior summers, I stayed through the Summer Research Scholars Program, conducting projects on campus and later in Yunnan doing fieldwork. I want to convince myself that I choose for a better opportunity, for my future, but the reality is cruel… These opportunities meant stability and purpose, but they also reminded me that I was here not by choice, but in fact also by necessity. While others returned home for a few weeks, I searched for places to stay, places that were not home but would take me in. When people asked about my summer plans, I usually gave vague answers. The truth was that I did not know where I would end up. Only one thing was certain that it is not home, not Burma.
Bangkok became my second home in this sense. My parents fly there from home; I fly there from China. We spend our days walking through malls and small cafés and catching up, pretending that was our home. We talk about family news, about my research, about every things, anything except the question of when we might see each other again. When the trip ends, I watch them disappear into the crowd at the airport, a familiar ache settling in. Bangkok is the only place that accepts all of us, but every goodbye also reminds me that our real home remains locked behind borders and fear. I grew up in Mandalay for seventeen years. I still dream of walking its streets again, of seeing my grandparents before time takes them away. I do not know when that day will come, but I hold on to that hope as tightly as I can.
Sometimes, my Chinese classmates ask me what my country is like. I often pause before answering. Many have only heard of the border scams in Myawaddy or the northern part of Myanmar （缅北）or the chaos of conflict. That image hurts. It feels like watching your homeland shrink into a headline of the newspaper/media. I want them to know that my country is not only corruption or crisis. It is also people who keep living with quiet dignity, teachers who teach without pay, families who share food during shortages, children who still find ways to laugh under everything that we have experienced. Yet, I rarely know how to explain all of this. Words feel too small to hold what I feel.
Image by Elina Januska
Being Burmese abroad means living with a constant mix of pride and sorrow. It will at least somehow shapes and influence how I make plans, how I answer questions, how I bring myself in place where my country’s name is often misunderstood. Even beyond the violence at home, the consequences follow us across borders. In recent years, countries like the United States and, more recently, the United Kingdom have tightened/restricted visa pathways, and I have felt what it means to be reduced to a passport that raises hesitation. There are moments when it feels as if the place I come from closes doors before I even arrive. Carrying a bloody red burmese passport has become not just a marker of identity, but a quiet weight I must explain wherever I go. I have learned that distance does not dull belonging; instead it sharpens it. Every power cut my family mentions, every message delayed by a weak connection, ties me closer to the place I left behind.
It has been years since I left Myanmar. I do not know when I can return perhaps only after the fall of the military regime. Until then, I will keep meeting my parents halfway, between airports and time zones, holding onto the fragments of home that distance has not taken away. I wish that one day, I will no longer have to meet them in Bangkok, but in Mandalay, my beautiful hometown. I wish that one day, we can live in our own land again with the freedom, dignity, and peace that our people deserve.
Willy Wai Yan Min Htike
Hi, my name is nm, a class of 2026 student at Duke Kunshan majoring in Global Health and Public Policy. I am from Mandalay, Myanmar (Burma). I am interested in working in chronic disease management research and is passionate in improving the quality of life among vulnerable populations. Alongside research, I also write to reflect on questions of home, identity, and belonging across borders. Through both academic and personal work, I hope to connect policy with human experience, and to bring attention to stories that are often overlooked.”
By the Intersections Team:
Editor: Kevin Sprague
Website Developer: Oyu-Erdene Purevdorj
